Symantec targets SMEs with low-cost backup tools

Symantec's Backup Exec 2010 offers built-in deduplication

Security and storage giant Symantec today launched a new backup and recovery offering designed to help medium sized firms manage information growth in a secure, flexible and low cost manner.

Backup Exec 2010 offers built-in deduplication functionality, or integration through an OpenStorage API to third-party deduplication appliances. These will enable firms to reduce backup storage costs and network utilisation by eliminating redundant data.

The new product unifies archiving for Windows file systems and Exchange environments with its backup capabilities by archiving from the backup copy rather than pulling the data separately.

Backup Exec 2010 also features deduplication support for VMware and Hyper-V, and will recover Microsoft Exchange, SQL and Active Directory in VMware vSphere 4.0, VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V R2 virtual environments, said the firm.

"Organisations of all sizes are struggling to effectively manage information growth, particularly as they leverage virtualisation technologies, creating new backup and recovery complexities," said Pat Hanavan, vice president of Symantec Information Management Group.

"Deduplication and archiving have primarily been enterprise-class technologies, but Backup Exec 2010 brings them to the masses to solve difficult IT challenges in an extremely simple and easy to use solution."

Symantec also launched its enterprise-grade NetBackup 7 product today, featuring complete virtual machine protection, new backup replication for cost-effective disaster recovery and integrated deduplication to help simplify information management, according to the firm.